Law of Adoption - Significance Today

Significance Today

There is no evidence to suggest that homosexual sex was involved as part of the original practice of the law of adoption in the 19th century. However, beginning in the 1970s, some members of Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons began to suggest that the leadership of the LDS Church should restore the law of adoption in order to allow same-sex couples to be sealed to each other in the temple in a kind of quasi-celestial marriage. It has been argued that this would preserve the primacy of heterosexual marriage but would allow an ecclesiastical equivalent of homosexual civil unions—a homosexual ecclesiastical union. The LDS Church did not respond directly to these suggestions, but continues to oppose homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage.

The restoration of the law of adoption was implemented when some members of Affirmation in 1985 established the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ (commonly referred to as the Gay Mormon Church) and the First Presidency of that church restored the law of adoption, citing it as the theological justification for their practice of homosexual celestial marriage.